Desperate for allergy relief!

This won't be a wildly popular post but remember you did say "desperate". So a few years back I had some health issues and to make a long story readable I tried a vegan diet to try and fix my health issues as a last ditch effort. It worked! One of the pleasant side affects of my new diet after about three months was that I had no allergy symptoms. It was still winter so I didn't think to much of it. But when spring came along my allergies were still nonexistent. I have had hay fever for as long as I can consciously remeber. To the point of loosing eye sight because my eyes were swollen shut. I also thought I was born with two nostrils so I could breathe out of one while the other was plugged. XD

This year is the first year I've been relatively allergy free. Normally March through November, I'm miserable with allergies, on no end of antihistamines, sneeze, sniffles, the works. I eat a preindustrial, low inflammation, diet, and it helps with other problems, but it does just about nothing for seasonal allergies. I've tried the raw honey and nettle tea, no luck.


This year, it's slightly dry eyes, and non of the usual symptoms. It's also record high pollen count. The only difference in my diet is that I've started making, and eating raw milk cheese. Could the raw milk be helping? I don't know. But I'm an certainly enjoying not taking antihistamines.

To get permanent relief, it would be best if you consulted a homeopath. OTC homeopathic remedies do have limited abilities because the causes may not be being addressed. Most allergies are caused by vaccines, so your history needs to be thoroughly gone into.

Tea for relief of allergy symptoms:
nettles , elderberries, lemon balm, oatstraw, ginko, astragalus, elder flowers

Have you considered getting desensitizing shots?

Also, wash your hair in the evening, and change your sheets and pillowcases now! Because pollen gets trapped in your hair, and then you sleep all night long with pollen next to your face from your pollen-laden pillowcase.

For several decades I woke up every morning congested. It usually cleared up by noon.
A friend suggested that we try the atkins diet, mostly avoiding grains.

I did lose weight but more interestingly it broke the allergy and it never came back.
Maybe give it a try?

Can someone tell me why my eyes changed from hazel to blue after this diet?

I just checked, they went back to hazely.

My eyes vary between a blue-green and hazel, it depends on how much stress my system is under. As a teen during the small window I wore makeup, the fashion was to match your eyeshadow to your eye color. I did each eye and sat back to find one eye was greener than the other, and both shadowed lids matched their respective eye perfectly... My eyes have come off hazel and back to their blue-green now that my health has improved and no longer go brown in low light. I had someone do my iris map last summer and asked them to redo it, and they said the map shows an improvement overall. Your eyes are the window to your soul...

I have been allergic to pollen of grasses (and some other things but grasses have been the biggest problem) since I was three years old. Without pills, nose drops amd eye drops I would have gone crazy during one month in the year. The itching of eyes was unbearable, the runny nose needed blowing every minute... my lungs were making funny noises when I was breathing... Even with the medications I had to spent all my time inside expect maybe 10-20mins daily, which were necessary for transport... Going to a grassy meadow for two minutes would have be something unthinkable.

During my university years I was searching for some natural cure. What helped me was to start a strict diet about three months before the pollen season starts. My diet is:
1.) no simple sugars. This means mainly "standard" white sugar, but it helps to restrict or stop eating also all other alternative sweeteners (natural or unnatural), honey and fruit (equivalent of one or two homegrown applas a day is ok). Including all processed foods where these things are mentioned between ingredients even in small amounts.
2.) give up white flour and anything made from it (so I eat only 100% wholemeal flour and products)
3.) give up all milk products( as you are vegan I guess you have done that already)
4.) give up rafinated oils (so only use virgin cold pressed oils for everything)

Base of my diet after applying this rules consisted of: lots of whole grains, legumes, vegetables and a reasonable (up to three spoons) of seeds and nuts.

After three months of this diet I was with only very mild symptoms - blowong my nose maybe once in half an hour when outside in the town. When inside with almost no symptoms. I could go for a walk for to nature without any limmitations, even walking through flowering grass as high as me would just make me blow my nose maybe once in 5 minutes and no itchy eyes, no breathing problems. I felt free first time enjoying the spring.

I have beem doing this for about 4-5 years and the results correspond with how strictly I stick to my diet (so how lazy or busy I am the three months befor pollen season).

I have meet other people following this diet (or macrobiotic inspired diet or paleo inspired diet, which I find contradictory, but they have something (this) in common) who got rid of allergy totally.

What helpes to relieve symtoms even more for me is also some psychic things as relaxing, accepting world as it is, not fighting against anything. Maybe meditation and yoga?

I keep thinking about this thread as I become aware of other ways that I am avoiding allergies, in addition to the ones listed above. No point listing them though, because they are variations on a theme: Avoid the little exposures to chemicals and foods that add up to a big problem. Pay attention to how I am feeling and what I am doing to identify triggers. Take the required steps to minimize exposure, even when they are not convenient or socially acceptable. Turn down offers for food containing triggers.

Here's a photo of one of my dust masks...

Joseph, I love how fashion forward you are. You have pretty eyes.

I walked upwind of a few mowers going today and got a huge dose of yardgrass and alfalfa and doing fine. A few snorts but not 'plungerface' and hide. The overall improvements to health from the recent diet and life changes is worth every bit. I'll agree on if you fix all the little things you can ride the occasional much better.

You are all amazing! Thank you for all the support and advice! I have been a vegan for over a year now and will not go back (I love animals too much and my health has gotten better) so that has helped allergies this year quite a bit!I try eating a predominately raw diet as well! I avoid gluten and for the last month or so have been avoided added sugars. I still eat agave as a natural sweetener in a banana smoothie I make. The no sugar has certainly helped my immune system as far as I can tell. I meditate every morning and sometimes at night so stress relief has been a major focus of mine every since embarking on a healthy lifestyle. I started showering at night from a suggestion here and I believe that helps as my allergies this year have been very mild especially since now I work outside all day in greenhouses where pollen and dust are abound! Plus showering at night is very relaxing. Sometimes I take an Epsom salt bath to detox. I drink lemon water every morning to also detox. This weekend I bought some nettle tea and have been drinking that for the past few days. I love tea so this was a great suggestion! I also bought a goldenseal and Echinacea supplement raw supplement for my immune system. I take probiotics and digestive enzymes for stomach health. Although I do need to invest in better probiotics! I believe that the stomach is the second brain as many of you have suggested! I do need to focus more attention on exercise to help with my bodys everything haha! I am planning on joining the local yoga studio for that and to continue playing basketball and going on runs outside as the weather gets nicer here in Minnesota. I've also been taking a raw and natural turmeric and quercetin allergy supplement for the past few weeks which has really helped! I did find a natural sea salt saline spray fro while I am at work and the netti pot I use daily isn't available! This is going to be the best year yet for getting my allergy symptoms down! As long as I eat like I should, exercise, and get good sleep, with all these other natural suggestions from you lovely people I should have a fantastic summer dedicating to adventures outside and helping others live better lives! It's easier to do all that when you don't feel sick most days! Thank you again for all of the suggestions and I hope they have helped others as much as they have helped me! I'll post more updates of my allergy saga as well! I hope all of your weekends were fantastic!

Evan

p.s. I want one of those dust masks!

Agave nails me just like honey, so perhaps there's something natural in it that helps you. Making your own yogurt helps with probiotics, and you can make vegan yogurt. I find that has helped a good deal with intestinal health as does a protein supplement I purchase online (organic, vegan, and gluten free) and use to boost my okara to the equivalent of meat. Keeping your fiber up helps with digestive health also. AS for the dust filter, doesn't Joseph have such pretty eyes too? Nice model... Wool should be an excellent filter, enough fibery stuff to trap the pollen and dust. Just wash as needed to get the trapped stuff out.

The doctor approved supplement I use, 'Raw Protein-Beyond Organic Protein Formula' by Garden of Life, which is all raw, vegan, no gluten, no filler. It has 17% protein and 'live probiotics and enzymes'. One scoop (about 1/4 cup) has 17 grams of protein. A woman on average needs 46. This mixed with my okara (6-9 grams depending on how drained it is) brings that into the range of meat, with no meat in sight. This is making radical improvements in my diet while I am still working on how to naturally eat/incorporate some of the ingredients into my daily diet. Recycle code on the plastic fully wide mouth container is '2' so it's BPA free and the containers are mega useful as a container for other things!

Madeleine Innocent wrote:To get permanent relief, it would be best if you consulted a homeopath. OTC homeopathic remedies do have limited abilities because the causes may not be being addressed. Most allergies are caused by vaccines, so your history needs to be thoroughly gone into.

Don't waste a penny on homeopathy. A treatment should have at least some plausible means by which it could work. The idea that vaccines cause your allergies is also unsubstantiated. Allergies existed long before there were vaccines. It's your body reacting to the pollen and chemicals that plants naturally produce.

There are many good suggestions here. Ethan and Joseph both had lots of helpful info. One thing I don't see is nourishing infusions. Nettle is mentioned several times and can be very helpful, but I find that most people use (at most) 1T herb to a cup of water. For an effective infusion, you need 1 ounce of DRIED nettle (about 2 cups) in a quart jar. Fill the jar with boiling water, wait a minute for the herb to absorb the water, then top it off with more boiling water. Put a lid on and seal tight for 4 - 8 hours, or overnight. This should be drunk throughout the day and can replace water. You can add a bit of mint or other herbs for flavor.

Again, like Ethan and Joseph mentioned, there are many things to consider. The whole environment, especially your bedroom is very important.

- Vacuum often. I dislike bagless vacs. Hoover bagged vacuums are my favorite and I've tried most of them (well, unless you want to spend $$$$ for a Miele).

- Keep 'fiber' furnishings to a minimum. If your sofa/chairs are covered in fabric, cover them with a sheet that you can wash often.

- OPEN your windows at least 10 minutes a day - the air in your home is much more dirty than the air outside, even in polluted cities.

- Clean with baking soda, white vinegar, salt, and hydrogen peroxide. And Dr. Bronners soaps. (ask me if you need more help with these) Get rid of chemical cleaners.

- Get an allergy encasement for your mattress and box springs, and any bed pillows. Wash sheets often in HOT water.

Hello again all you lovely permies!

My allergies have been better this year than every before even with working around pollen and it all! I have been avoided sugar, eating as raw as I can, avoiding food that I notice I react to (garlic), doing netty pots daily, drinking nettle, turmeric, and dandelion teas and taking a b vitamin supplement with vitamin c in it along with digestive enzymes and probiotics every meal! I need to work on getting to bed and getting quality rest and trying not to overeat. I also need to start exercising as well. I would like to get into yoga and should run my dog. Another thing I need to work on is stress management. Getting back into meditation, exercising, and sleep will certainly help. So if anyone needs an online workout/meditation partner so we keep each other in check, please message me! Thank you all for the wonderful, and priceless advice. This community is so giving and nice, I love it! I hope all of your memorial days are going fantastically!

To health and happiness,

Evan

With Tumeric, I found it 'works' better if you also take some black pepper with it.

I add both to my okara pulp when I give it the sprout additives and such to boost the protein to help balance my diet. I take them at about a 1:5 to 1:6 ratio (black pepper to turmeric).

I also eat about 1.5 teaspoons of Ceylon cinnamon a day (7 grams) to help with the blood sugar, I add to any high carb food that I eat. It is so mild it almost disappears flavorwise.

I see a lot of folks suggesting local raw honey which is a great recommendation.

However it should be mentioned, if your already suffering the allergy effects, honey isn't going to save you. Raw honey works by early small micro doses of the allergens that cause you to suffer. This lets your body learn to accept them, because the reality is most allergies are the body misidentifying pollen etc as harmful and reacting to it rather than them being truly harmful. Honey gives your body a safe small dose to learn this is not harmful. But it needs to be used before your suffering.

Typically I start really making sure I eat plenty of honey at the start of winter. As winter is coming close to ending I will make sure to eat even more honey. This late winter, early spring time is also a good time for the dose upping with edible bee pollen (bee bread). To sort of signal your body "get ready more pollen is coming".

I would also note, while local honey is best don't discount honey from similar regions if access to local raw honey is difficult to source. And while on the topic yes raw honey is best but even yes the store bought pasteurized honey does help if you can't source raw honey. It is nowhere near as effective. But it can help get your body started on identifying pollen as not a bad thing since the pasteurization process doesn't completely eliminate the pollen in honey.


Key thing with honey is it is a preventative not a cure for when your already suffering.

Devin and others,

Honey, raw honey, is a miracle food, totally. You can use it for sweetening, for allergy management, symptom relief for colds, and even wound management, but. A few of us are allergic to it and react badly. So, if you can use it, it's wonderful. Locally I know some people that keep hives and I buy a couple of frames off them every year for use in my house. My spouse has seasonal allergies and he can eat it, and I've even put a comb down to crystallize, and after a few years, it's ready and boy is that stuff great (I had some in the days before I had issues). (yes I buy the whole 'frame' and return it after processing it, to the beekeeper). In that case I get the best of the worlds, and source to the prevalent wind direction into town, so he gets the full benefit of the pollens that he will be dealing with for the snort season. Plus I get real beeswax to use for other things.

"Key thing with honey is it is a preventative not a cure for when your already suffering."

For me, it was a cure, I started using apple cider vinegar and our home grown honey when I became allergic to something after we moved and after a few years I didn't need it any more.

I never found out what I was actually allergic to but every year when the wild mustard was blooming the allergies started up. For about ten years each year was a little less of a problem until I no longer needed the honey and apple cider vinegar.

Do what ever you find works for you!

I used to have allergies.....something FIERCE.  It was horrendous, and to the point that I didn't enjoy summers. Some of my first memories are being prodded by allergy doctors so they could figure out what type of drug to give me. And at a very young age I was  put on prescription drugs...pills, shots, nose spray, eye drops, inhalers......every summer.....all summer.  I also had severe asthma with the allergies.  It's been around 10 years since I've experienced anything resembling seasonal allergies, yet everyone around me that I grew up with, who had much less severe allergies than I had, continues to suffer....season after season.

I try to avoid these topics now-a-days, because of all the confusion out there, but this one I have personal experience with. I studied health of the human body, "independently", for about 6 years solid, while experimenting with different eating habits, and not only because of the issue I had with allergies, but because it was knowledge that I felt was important to have.  I was obsessed to learn what the body THRIVED upon, so I've been down the path of, "try this, try that", and being led to believe certain things and buy expensive supplements simply because there are good salesman out there.  "you also need to watch out for those trolls that get paid to discredit truth"

I'm just going to share briefly what I've discovered.  The human body has a species appropriate diet, just like every other being on this planet.  And it's quite well known that when a species strays from the food source its body requires, then sickness sets in.  You wouldn't feed your cows the same thing you feed your cat....right?  And vice versa...otherwise you would have some sick animals.  A lot of people will state that we're omnivores and we have a pair of K9 teeth, so they think we're required to eat certain things that really aren't very good to the body....Bless everyone going down such a confusing path....

Most people don't want to change their eating habits, for one reason or another.  And I get it, because food can be very comforting. But if you are wanting to get rid of those seasonal allergies for good, not just a little relief, but I'm talking about actually getting rid of those allergies....then cleansing and healthy eating habits are in order. But if you can't go that far and have no desire to change your eating habits in such a profound way, then at the VERY least, "IME", I would suggest cutting out gluten grains "possibly all grain?" and all dairy.  Those two were HUGE culprits that contributed to my misery.  Simply cutting those two foods from what I was eating made a massively noticeable improvement in how I felt.  It took roughly a week, after cutting out those two foods, for my body to cleanse them out enough that I noticed any relief.

One last thing to ponder, humans are the only creature on the planet that cooks its food.

Dale Hodgins wrote:

Madeleine Innocent wrote:To get permanent relief, it would be best if you consulted a homeopath. OTC homeopathic remedies do have limited abilities because the causes may not be being addressed. Most allergies are caused by vaccines, so your history needs to be thoroughly gone into.

Don't waste a penny on homeopathy. A treatment should have at least some plausible means by which it could work. The idea that vaccines cause your allergies is also unsubstantiated. Allergies existed long before there were vaccines. It's your body reacting to the pollen and chemicals that plants naturally produce.

Seconded.
Homeopathy's lousy theoretical foundation means that any claim it works had better come with a link to research supporting the claim.
If it is not supported, I will ignore you.
If the supporting link is has flaws I will point them out.

To be fair, quite a lot of people who call themselves homeopaths often use naturopathic treatments (with active ingredients in detectable concentrations!) so I will try not to make assumptions.

Sleepdeprivation makes it so I can't tell if my tone is too harsh, if it is I apologize for the tone.
I won't apologize for implying that homeopathy is silly though.

The vaccine thing I'm not going to respond to because what I want to say will get me banned.

Reginald Ret wrote:
The vaccine thing I'm not going to respond to because what I want to say will get me banned.

Everyone is welcome to share their opinions here, so long as it's done in a nice way and adhered to the publishing standards.  So maybe just consider it an exercise in wording things appropriately.  

Ok I didn't have time to read the whole thing but the original post, so bear with me if it's been replied to already.

I practice kapalbhati and other breathing exercices on a daily basis.
I eat grains, wild plants, fruits, and salmon once or twice a month.

I have HORRIBLE allergies from mid-august to early october.
This year I thought I'm not taking meds.

I coughed and sneezed so much I ended up with PNEUMONIA.

I take the pharma-pills. They work. Seriously.
I now have heavy pains in my right lungs which slows me down a lot work-wise. It was not worth it.

My two pennies? Yeah I'm not fond of evil pharma. But the allergy pills WORKS WONDER.

Burra Maluca wrote:

Reginald Ret wrote:
The vaccine thing I'm not going to respond to because what I want to say will get me banned.

Everyone is welcome to share their opinions here, so long as it's done in a nice way and adhered to the publishing standards.  So maybe just consider it an exercise in wording things appropriately.  

Thanks, that is good advice but yesterday I was not in the right mindset to do so nicely.

I should try later, because it is an important topic to me that touches many other topics important to me.

I may have already said this, but one thing that everyone can do for allergies is to physically remove the allergens from their environment, by running a good HEPA filter (not the skinny tower kind, it needs some surface area and it should say "HEPA" on it, as that is a regulated term in the U.S.) and to physically remove the allergens from your nose, by nasal washing.

The traditional method is to use a neti pot.  Another effective method is to use the NeilMed Sinus Rinse, which is a squeeze bottle (it's plastic, though).  I recommend making a mild saline solution, normal saline, which is the saltiness of tears.  Your tears run into your nose all day and you don't notice, because the salinity is just right.  Water without enough salt burns your nose, and water with too much salt burns as well.

Allergies are additive - the more exposure you have, the more symptoms you will have.  If you can spend several hours breathing very clean air (from being in a room with a good HEPA filter) you will feel better all day.  If you develop a habit of washing out your nose twice a day, when you brush your teeth, you will decrease your allergen load significantly.

Adding to Julia Winter's post... my spouse has a horrendous dust mite allergy and it shows up in his eyes, gooping-stinging-burning so badly that he would paw at them to get relief until the eyes and area around them looked like raw hamburger. I actually duct taped socks over his hands to prevent him from rubbing them so much while half asleep!

Get a protective mattress cover and pillow covers. Especially on a new mattress and pillows. It is said half the weight of a 5 year old mattress is shed skin, dust mites, and dust mite dander.
Hardwood or hard surface floors and wood slat blinds that can be easily dusted instead of curtains.
IQaire Pro filter. It's a tower filter and a filter set costs close to $400 but this is what asthmatics use. Ours almost does the entire house (rated for 1200 square feet, our house is 1400)
3M Filtrete Elite 2400 furnace filters. Only Lowe's carries them but they will ship. Here they last 3 weeks with an occasional backvacuuming.
Dyson D25 'Animal' vacuum cleaner with extra hepa filter. You take the filter out on occasion, wash in distilled water and let dry. You have two so you can swap them out. This vacuum knows S-U-C-K and will dim the lights (11 amp motor).

The doctor writes us a prescription for the IQaire Pro filters every year.
Get 100% cotton sheets. Wash weekly/change weekly. Wash in HOT water. Put your bedding, towels, etc; into airtight storage. (I use huge seethrough sterilite tubs). This keeps mites and other critters out of them. (we have house spiders....)
If possible keep your clothing out of the bedroom, set up storage/changing/dressing elsewhere.
Vacuum the bottom of your IQaire Pro every week. It sucks air in the bottom and it gets incredibly furry. It will make for a better functioning unit.

Add this to dietary changes, and it will help. He gets maybe two weeks a year now of take antihistamines in the spring when the cottonwood trees bloom instead of several months of misery, and expensive medications.

A while back I met someone who told me he used to have bad allergies, then he switched to all organic food and they went away. He had to be pretty strict about it and he stopped eating at restaurants and prepared all his own food. In my own experience, as I eat more and more organic, my allergies get milder.

Heather Stovall wrote:A while back I met someone who told me he used to have bad allergies, then he switched to all organic food and they went away. He had to be pretty strict about it and he stopped eating at restaurants and prepared all his own food. In my own experience, as I eat more and more organic, my allergies get milder.

That is my experience too. Cutting out the commercial foods, growing my own, and making my own foods at home; has helped a lot.

I think this is somehow related to the stress to the body from chemical exposure.  When the body is forced to work on detoxifying a stack of chemicals, it seems more likely to have reactions to foods and environmental things.

I think another big factor is more variation in food.
When you don't think about what you eat, you tend to default to a limited selection of comfortable and easy options.
So when you start paying attention to what you eat, by either eating more organic for example, you automatically buy and prepare more varied foodstuffs.

I know it is common knowledge, but it bears repeating: A varied diet is a healthy diet.

I'm not saying there is nothing wrong with factory processed food, I just don't think it is the only factor and we should always keep an eye open for additional or alternative explanations.

My allergies are worst at night and I don't know of any medicine that offers long-term relief without side effects. I tried Flonase, etc., but these products don't always work and they do have side effects. I decided to live with it, but I have found some ways to get short term relief so I can at least get back to some reasonable form of sleep: How to get rid of a Stuffy Nose

These pepper sprays: Sinus Plumber and SinuOrega give you a quick blast of cayenne and other herbs. It burns temporarily, but does help clear things naturally so you can get back to sleep. I keep them by my bedside at night just for that.

Suffered for nigh on twenty years with sinus allergies. Couldn't open my eyes during the height of the allergy season as they would crust up and I had to prise them open and remove the flaking pollen that had gathered in my eyes. It was like my eyes were a magnet for pollen. My nose was also constantly blocked like I had a really bad cold. In desperation I sought the advice of a natural healer and she recommended I try a pollen barrier, natural of course. I purchased sinubalm and haymax just in case one worked and the other didn't. They both worked equally well and I only expected them to give me slight relief from the blocked nose. Wow! was I amazed when the other symptoms, crusted eyes, sore throat, streaming eyes, all subsided. Now I don;t have to hide myself away indoors any more.

You may have to play with dosages and not every cure works for every person.  (I know, Hark the Town Crier!).  My wife and many of my kids have been cursed by the allergy gods.  I use a hawthorne/nettle/ mint tea for my blood pressure.  I told my son about stinging nettle and allergies.  He tried it and found the dose I was using was too much for him.  Once he cut it in half, it has been working fine at getting rid of his symptoms.  

On a lighter note,  netti pots and sinus rinse work really well to prevent sinus infections and clean out sinuses.  At one point everyone in the house was afflicted with a really bad cold and we were making the sinus rinse ourselves.  The recipe is on the internet, easily found.  Make sure you get it right.  I was making some up one day for myself and got tablespoons and teaspoons mixed up.  OH MY GOSH!!!  The good news was that it cleaned out my sinuses REALLY WELL, for several days even.  The bad news was that felt like I had sucked a live coal up my nose.  I have since been much more careful with my recipe.

Most people would say that the cure is worse than the disease, but rubbing stinging nettle on my arms every day during allergy season helped me a lot.  Obviously you need to have a patch of it in your yard in order to try this.

I believe the theory is the histamine reaction to the nettle distracts your body from the allergic reaction to allergens.  It definitely feels like that is what is happening.

Dave Miller wrote:Most people would say that the cure is worse than the disease, but rubbing stinging nettle on my arms every day during allergy season helped me a lot.  Obviously you need to have a patch of it in your yard in order to try this.

I believe the theory is the histamine reaction to the nettle distracts your body from the allergic reaction to allergens.  It definitely feels like that is what is happening.

Well that sounds delightful. As much as I'd like to run out and try that right now, I won't.

Mind you, I'm fine this year. Catch me on a bad one, and I'll likely roll in the stuff if it works.

-CK

Dave Miller wrote:Most people would say that the cure is worse than the disease, but rubbing stinging nettle on my arms every day during allergy season helped me a lot.  Obviously you need to have a patch of it in your yard in order to try this.

I believe the theory is the histamine reaction to the nettle distracts your body from the allergic reaction to allergens.  It definitely feels like that is what is happening.

Dave, it works for me too.  I have a patch of nettles and I generally brush up against them with my legs, and the relief is within a minute.  I may have to sting myself a few times a day if my symptoms are very bad, but to be honest, a bit of stinging on my legs is far preferable to being unable to breathe.  

Galadriel Freden wrote:

Dave Miller wrote:Most people would say that the cure is worse than the disease, but rubbing stinging nettle on my arms every day during allergy season helped me a lot.  Obviously you need to have a patch of it in your yard in order to try this.

I believe the theory is the histamine reaction to the nettle distracts your body from the allergic reaction to allergens.  It definitely feels like that is what is happening.

Dave, it works for me too.  I have a patch of nettles and I generally brush up against them with my legs, and the relief is within a minute.  I may have to sting myself a few times a day if my symptoms are very bad, but to be honest, a bit of stinging on my legs is far preferable to being unable to breathe.  

I definitely reacted less to the sting over time.  Now I don’t mind it at all, it just feels tingly for a day.  The only downsides for me were 1) explaining the occasional welts on my arms to my coworkers (I will use your idea to rub it on my legs) and 2) occasionally there were aphids on the nettles which I inadvertently transferred to my arms.

Still stand by using preflowering Ragweed as tincture, along with Red Clover and Goldenrod.  I use liberally a dropperful as needed.  Externally for bug bite allergies you can't beat plantain.  Chew it up, stick it on.  Matthew Wood (herbalist) relates a story of 3 women gardening  who got into a nest of spiders and all got bitten.  One if them had just learned about plantain and put some on each of the bites.  The women thought the spiders might be black widow and all agreed to go to see the doctor in the am.  (Although, I don't know why one would wait if that was the thought...).  Anyways, the one woman woke in the am with much improvement in appearance of bites.  The other two women were dead.  I have stories of my own, but this one really showcases the power of the plant.

Maybe I didn't read it here because it is not considered an option, but when it's really bad, go hang out inside a closed room with an operating air filter. Haha.  And don't touch your eyes despite the itch, close them completely and gently massage with a clean cold moist piece of cloth.  I'd get a washcloth just about sopping wet with ice water and just lay it across my face when I was young.  

Allergies and memory lane....

When I was 4, I'd wake up in early June and not be able to open eyes.  Crusted shut, like it would rip off my eyelashes if you didn't rub water on them a few times and wait a few minutes.  Wow, disgusting, poor kid.  Take your pills, and be mostly better in like an hour.  Lucky me, I had pills and the inflammation was concentrated in my eyes and sinuses.  My lungs were good.

I went in as a subject at age 8 for some official pharmaceutical study.  They paid me like a hundred dollars an hour like 25 years ago, to lay on my stomach and not react to itches.  They pricked my back like two dozen times, and then rubbed all kinds of wonderful allergens into the spots.  Turns out I was severely allergic to grasses and cats.  Pine pollen and dog dander were apparently not a problem.  I got some experimental drug and never found out whether I was on the placebo or not.  It didn't seem to work as well as the green and clear pill I had taken during allergy season for as long as I could remember.

I was otherwise healthy, it was just the grass pollen season in the Willamette valley. And cats, and a few trees which were not conifers.

Starting around age 6, most my allergic reactions started to slowly become less severe.  My eyes would become horribly itchy and inflamed at age six, but at least the grass pollen wouldn't cause them to swell shut.  By age 12, I could be outside for like 15 minutes during pollen season before symptoms appeared.  I was still eating Taco bell and all the same old garbage until like age 19.  By Age 19, my grass allergy was gone if I remembered to pop a Clariton.  Next thing I knew, I had lost my cat allergy completely, and had become somewhat severely allergic to dogs, with or without a pill.  Now, if I scratch a dog behind the ears and then touch my eye, it makes for an insanely itchy and grossly bloodshot/inflamed eye, whereas when I was young, I could wrestle with a dirty Labrador and mindlessly rub an eye afterwards and have no allergic reaction.....weird.

I still have a grass allergy at age 34, without a pill it mostly only acts up after like an hour of banging around outside when I can see the clouds of pollen coming off the grass when they are disturbed.  This allergic reaction is today limited to sneezing and snot, it no longer affects my eyes.  Sneezing isn't so bad, but snot is ewwwww, like nobody likes blowing noses in public haha.

While I'd guess most allergies are the result of a health 'problem,' my experience with dogs and cats makes me think many allergies are something else.  Like instead of a "haywire" immune system or otherwise malfunction health, it is a necessary reaction for the body to maintain itself in the moment.  Say the reaction to one animal oil/dander and not another, or one plant pollen and not another, one nut and not another etc is a result of some energy deep in the mind, and not a physiological issue to be physiologically corrected (Ha, that opinion might as well be homeopathy.)   Also, blowing out so much snot that it makes you thirsty a few times per year might be good for a person...like exercise for the excretory system, getting that channel flowing now and then may be dumping some shit other than the pollen which triggered it.

This is not to take away from all the great advice here as to how a person may reduce the severity of the allergies.